New Mars Forums

Found on the Futron site a history of the X-33 or the OSP project.

http://www.futron.com/pdf/OSP%20Briefin … rkshop.pdf

Bwhite supplied a link to the Futron Corporation Space Transportation Costs: http://www.futron.com/pdf/FutronLaunchCostWP.pdf

In 20 years, china will be a different nation due to the feeling of democracy and freedoms that will come from individuals that visit free nations. Just look at the changes that have occured to the old soviet block nations and to Russia.

Now here is a real surprise of science being done on the ISS.
Soldering Surprise
There's nothing routine about working in space, as astronaut Mike Fincke found out recently when he did some soldering onboard the International Space Station.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004 … solder.htm

So we actually can build things in space if given the tools. Who would have thought it.

But the one thing they have lots of is cheaper labor and american businesses love to farm out just about everything in order to make a buck.

When I think of heavy lift I do not assume only cargo or of very large size modules. As I noted before I was referencing the need for more than a few astronauts with enough materials to maybe transfer into any such earlier launched Habitat modules.

The Progress is currently carrying to the Iss about 2.5 tons of food, water, propellant, and other supplies for its two-man crew.

How long do you think those supplies will last with a real size crew for exploration to mars or to the moon.

Just think about how many people would be on this journey and for how many months that the journey wil be fore not to mention the number of months they will be there in addition to the return trip.

If one does puny little capsulse for a max of 3. What then leave them parked in orbit for the four or 5 yearfor the round trip. I would hope not. I also do not see that many docking ports on a habitat module either. Not to mention bringing those capsules all the way to Mars or the moon, One would be bad enough.

Sorry If I am way off topic of cargo lift only.

Cash flow is the only reason that we are not looking at this.
Building of the infrastucture to start the process is a must.
Finding some way to not only design a cheaper rocket but one that is less costly to operate is also a must.

Try, try again:  Space Transport Corp http://www.space-transport.com/ ., the Washington-based rocket team whose rocket blew up last weekend, is targeting Sept. 12 for the next test launch from the Olympic Peninsula, says Phillip Storm, the company's president.

"We’re going to fabricate two more identical Rubicon rockets. ... We're going to do another engine test in early September," Storm writes in an e-mail.

Storm says telemetry from the launch of Rubicon 1 indicates that the attitude control system "was fighting to keep it straight, even though the rocket was being torn apart."

"The rocket held in there pretty good even though one of the engines exploded," Storm writes. "I’m fairly confident a pilot could have thrown the parachute and been OK. The capsule was catastrophically damaged only on impact with the water. We’ll come up with some extra safety measures to ensure a command is sent for parachute deployment in the event of a failure."

Here is the other one that I had seen from the Next generation or SLI work that has been recently canned. It seems like most of the Nasa links are now gone to this info.

NASA Working with Contractors to Explore Shuttle Successor
http://dev.space.com/missionlaunches/fl_021030a.html

You are right if the price per unit is not effected by building by an assembly line process though automation versus by hand for a fix quantity of build. But that is just part of the problem is that high cost of build.

To take a page out of what the Russians continued to do with their soyuz space craft. They made continued changes and enhancemens as need to keep there rockets flying and are still doing so today.

While america kept changing the rocket platform in large jumps or into other design concepts each time.

From earlier in the thread using the RD-170 versus the F1 of the Saturn is a good choice for a first stage engine.

This sort of sound like a Saturn 1 or V re-du derivative only modernized for a business model using what is a close match for the old specification.